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Talk:Androgyne/@comment-72.53.159.195-20141107050910/@comment-72.53.159.195-20141122173046
To the person who responded to my post, thank you so much for coming in and talking about your experience! I'm constantly seeing information about androgyne's like, "Androgyne means androgynous" or even "Androgyne means people with both female and male aspects" and although both those things can be a part of the experience (like androgyne's dressing androgenously as an expression or feeling both feminne and masculine traits) it doesn't encompass the entirety of the experience and still relies on the gender binary that is exclusionary of the rest of it. Like for me, the genderless and third gender aspects. I haven't found the language to talk about those and I would love to talk to more androgyne's about language so that we can start constructing some in order to express those third gender and genderless qualities more. I've also experienced a lot of inner fragmentation over my life because of feeling like I *had* to participate in the binary to even be considered "attractive" and the binary always seemed so...restrictive and cliche to me. I've had a lot of resentment because of feeling like my other aspects were being blatently ignored by people around me, or being forced into the gender binary when I never felt that I fit it or that it suited me completely. I had to go through a lot of internalized loathing and a lot of frustration, confusion, disappointment, resentment and sadness over it before I discovered that androgyne was a gender. It's important to put labels to things and to have the language to talk about it because otherwise I can't talk to any one about it, and if I can't talk to any one about it I can't relay my experiences to other people. And if I can't relay my experiences to other people, I can't work through the gendered society we live in and navigate it in a way that allows me to validate my experiences or have other people validate my experiences by recognizing that mine is different and respecting that. And if they can't respect that, then I need the language to talk about how that affects me and other people like me. It's necessary to think about gender because we live in a society that's entirely geared towards the gender binary, we need labels for communication and to deny people their right to label themselves as they see fit is a form of erasure. Sure it'd be easier to just not label it, but then people can continue to label and define us how they ''choose to rather than allowing us our autonomy over our own definitions and labels. I agree about the percentage thing, I feel it's problematic for a lot of reasons and one of those is what you mentioned - that it implies a spectrum with the male/female polarities. The other problematic thing with it is that it completely erases the third (fourth or other) gender or genderless aspects and still talks about things like gender neutrality in a polarized view. Why can't gender neutrality be implied as to mean neutrality between male, female, genderless, agender, third gender, androgyne (insert other genders I have missed here because there are so many) spectrum? Why is it that gender neutrality still relies on the gender binary to define itself when there are other genders? (As i say this I look up the genderless, gender neutral and agender genders and find that they have an overlap and can be defined under the umbrella term Neutrois? How ever my idea of gender''less is meaning to have NO gender while gender neutral is to mean having a gender that is neutral between them all? Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.) That isn't to say that androgyne's can't just experience the two genders, or even that they have to embody a certain number of aspects that means more than just two, I just have an issue with how much it erases the rest of the possible experiences that androgyne's can have. I am an embodiment of several aspects, two of which are outside of the gender binary and I experience them all at the same time. This sometimes leads to some conflict between my body and mind, but I've deduced that it's because my body is in a state of permanence, unlike the fluidity I can experience within my gender as androgyne. Anyways, sorry for the long post. I'm just excited to talk to someone else about this.